New Japan, New Asia?

Last November, shortly after Election Day, I met with a legislator from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Kuniko Tanioka was in town to see the usual Washington types. But she also wanted a front-row seat to watch Barack Obama's historic win. After all, Obama was the reason she'd thrown her hat in the ring in the first place. Tanioka, the president of a women's university in a city between Tokyo and Kyoto, was inspired by Obama's convention speech in 2004 and his promise of change. If an outsider like Obama could transform American politics, why couldn't she, as an outsider, transform Japanese politics?

There was only one problem. Her Democratic Party had never been in power. In fact, only one party has really been in charge of Japan since the end of World War II. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) helped build the world's No. 2 economy, but it has also imposed a stifling consensus that discouraged public debate and suppressed civil society initiative. As a result, Japanese elections have been about as exciting as watching grass grow.

But yesterday, politics in Japan became a whole lot more interesting when Tanioka's party captured more than 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house of Japanese parliament. Most pundits have dismissed the vote as simply a protest against the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's ineptitude, the rising unemployment figures, and the indignity of living in a one-party state.

This dismissal obscures the fact that the Democratic Party offers a dramatically different platform. Party leader Yukio Hatoyama recently delivered a stinging attack on "market fundamentalism." Instead of this "U.S.-led" approach, he argued that "we must work on policies that regenerate the ties that bring people together, that take greater account of nature and the environment, that rebuild welfare and medical systems, that provide better education and child-rearing support, and that address wealth disparities." Japan might become the first country to implement a serious, post-meltdown economic policy that will humanize globalization and drive a stake through casino capitalism -- in a way that Obama, beholden to the Wall Street interests that helped put him in office, has never promised to do.

Hatoyama also envisions a new foreign policy for Japan. "Regionally, the Democratic Party would likely guide Japan toward better relations with China," I write in Revolution in Japan. "Hatoyama has also vowed not to visit Yasukuni shrine as long as it continues to house the spirits of Japanese war criminals. This could lead to an upturn in Japan-South Korean relations as well."

But the burning question for Washington is the future of U.S.-Japanese relations. The DPJ has never been enthusiastic about Japan serving as a handmaiden to U.S. military operations. Hatoyama has called for a more equal relationship with Washington. This rhetoric might simply translate into a demand that the United States pay more for stationing troops in Japan. Or the DPJ implement a much more Asia-centric, multilateral, diplomacy-rich approach that kicks U.S. troops out of Okinawa (and perhaps the Japanese mainland as well), ends all support for U.S. military operations in the Middle East and in Asia, and fundamentally recasts the bilateral Status of Forces Agreement.

Many observers in the United States are quick to assert that the alliance with Japan will survive intact. "Some worry that a DPJ government may undermine the U.S.-Japanese security alliance," writes Dan Sneider, but the party leaders are "deeply committed to a strong relationship, even if they take a different path now and then." Although he acknowledges the potential challenge to the alliance, the Heritage Foundation's Bruce Klingner argues that "Washington can take some comfort from knowing that dire predictions of a dramatic leftward lurch in Japan are wrong." Both liberals and conservatives note that Hatoyama and other party leaders seem to have backtracked on some of their more independent pronouncements as the elections loomed.

But perhaps Hatoyama is simply being tactical. He saw what happened to Roh Moo-Hyun after the South Korean leader announced a similar call for a more equal relationship with Washington. The Bush administration savaged Roh, and former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld in particular seemed to take pleasure in twisting the arms of his South Korean counterparts. Hatoyama and the DPJ would be wise to make all the right noises and yet, at a policy level, effect foreign policy change that the Japanese (and Asians in general) can truly believe in. The Japanese revolutionaries who engineered the DPJ's electoral victory, like Kuniko Tanioka, will accept nothing less.

 

 

Comments

[Bub]

I thing Japan is the first "post modern - in a real sense" country.

They have been that country since 1955 - which is part of the reason for their success.

Modernism is all about specialization of tasks leading to economies of scale, which had the effect of isolating and dehumanizing humans and destroying communities. Japan's model has always been more communitarianistic.

Almost alone among the great post war economies, crime in Japan actually fell radically for most of the post war years. There economic model, instead of being driven by the paradigm of 'extensivity of scale' was driven by "intensivity of scale" by taking advantage of communitarian structures in the work place, etc...

Japanese corporations, because of widespread employee tenure are also run on behalf of the employees interest first. American capitalist media won't tell you about that. This is what gave Japan the broadest distribution of wealth in the world for most of the post war era.

They kept telling us that Japan would have to change to be like GM to servive, that they would have to lay off people. Well GM's declared bankruptcy, lost most of its market share in the last 30 years, and Toyota is still going strong.

There are lots of problems with Japan, but they are farther along in solving them then we are in ours.

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

This could be very interesting. It appears that the Japanese have come to the only logical conclusion that the end game of all mature capitalist systems is stagnation in the production/service sector; which leads to high unemployment and ever diminished growth in GDP (growth in GDP in the US has been on a downward slide for 50 years). Only two things can be done to stimulate growth under these conditions: 1) A more "socialized society" with more equality of wealth distribution and a command driven economy that gives workers/consumers more money to spend on product supplied or 2) economic growth based on unequal distribution of wealth, i.e., a supply side economy (Raygunism) were all new wealth is captured by the top 1% of the population by the process of ever more frequent and severe bubbles and crashes (1987, 2000, 2007) that enrich the upper class during the bubble but impoverishes the lower classes during the crashes and which leaves the upper class with more relative wealth after each cycle.

[Bub]

The thing is, Japan, until very very very recently, has had one of the most broadly distributed wealth systems in the world.

I just cut this from the CIA's world book enclycopedia:

Household income or consumption by percentage share:

lowest 10%: 4.8%
highest 10%: 21.7% (1993)

The stat is from 1993, still.

Here it is for Sweden:
lowest 10%: 3.6%
highest 10%: 22.2% (2000)

The U.S.:
lowest 10%: 2%
highest 10%: 30% (2007 est.)

Brazil:
lowest 10%: 1.1%
highest 10%: 43% (2007)

However, in the past ten years, this has changed dramatically. The Gini index for the same countries are:
Japan: 38.1 (2002)
Sweden: 23 (2005)
U.S. : 45 (2007)
Brazil 56.7 (2005)

I have an almanac at home that still has Japan's GINI index listed at 24.7 and Sweden's at 25.

So you can see, things have changed radically in Japan in the last 10 years or so in regard to distribution of income (Raygun Economics).

Another anomaly, Japan was the first country to implement Keynesian style economics in 1932, and was out of the Great Depression by 1933. By 1940 their industrial production had doubled. Leave it to Japan to be the first out of the Great Recession.

[superstition]

You forgot war.

[realpolitic]

I would like to watch what the new administration can do to "humanize" the economy and restore growth. it may be tough to get anything through their legislative body as has been the case for Obama!

[OldSchoolLiberal]

We have a tendency in the US to cast things in our own terms. The DPJ of course is not the eponym of the US's Democrat Party.

This is an interesting and exciting transition in Japan and it will be even more interesting to see how things play out in terms of implementation which is always harder than promising.

[superstition]

"But perhaps Hatoyama is simply being tactical..­..Hatoyama and the DPJ would be wise to make all the right noises and yet, at a policy level, effect foreign policy change that the Japanese (and Asians in general) can truly believe in."

Big talk, little change? That sounds familiar.